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New submitter BrianPRabbit writes "Bruce Schneier proposes 'breaking up' the NSA. He suggests assigning the targeted hardware/software surveillance of enemy operations to U.S. Cyber Command. Further, the NSA's surveillance of Americans needs to be scaled back and placed under the control of the FBI. Finally, he says, is 'the deliberate sabotaging of security. The primary example we have of this is the NSA's BULLRUN program, which tries to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices." This is the worst of the NSA's excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide. .... [T]he remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.'"

Which is exactly how it's organized. The NSA is spying on overseas comms. When it links to a date/time placed/received call stateside, they hand that information to the FBI, and say, "This phone number in the US is talking to some very bad people overseas." The FBI then starts the investigation.

That is how it is supposed to be organized, but the current perception (true or false) is that this is not what is actually occurring.

Part of this comes from historical issues of agencies not wanting to work together or share data, esp when a particular case or subject crosses back and forth between foreign and domestic, so the perception is that the NSA, rather then handing the domestic pieces over to the FBI, continues to work with the data under the umbrella target... so organizing based off the origin

I understand your point. Only problem then becomes, "OK now what?" Following your scenario, let's say they start tracking you stateside, after you've made an international call to known or suspected threats overseas. Their systems aren't set up to intercept your calls. It's metadata only. So, they collect reams and reams of your phone calls to mom, the store, work, co-workers, and one or two known threats. Now what? They don't have jurisdiction to go to a FISA court, and a judge would laugh them out

No, that's NOT how it's supposed to be happening. The government is constitutionally prohibited from spying on Americans' communications without a warrant. Once you have a warrant, eavesdrop all you want.

Too bad they no longer respect that document, if in fact they ever did.

Which is exactly how it's organized. The NSA is spying on overseas comms. When it links to a date/time placed/received call stateside, they hand that information to the FBI, and say, "This phone number in the US is talking to some very bad people overseas." The FBI then starts the investigation.

If this was what was happening, people would not have so many problems with it. If you want to claim it _is_ this way then I expect to see people charged with criminal misconduct currently holding offices and not performing their duties as they should. Here are two words for you to review. "Parallel Construction".

Let's assume that everything is on the up and up, and we have nothing to worry about. The orifices in question are recommending to move to a 3 step system. If you call a store that has an employee that has a friend that called a "questionable" country you are within legal rights for monitoring. This is too vague of a definition, yet people think it will fix something. Play 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon and you quickly see that anyone can be associated with a "terrorist" pretty easily.

Second, calling overseas is not bad. "Overseas" is yet another overly broad term. Do they monitor K-mart officials because they do business? Wow, what a convenient term to use! Now if you shop at K-mart you are within 3 steps! Isn't that incredible? (no, don't answer that rhetorical question)

In a post following this one you claim "it's only metadata". Anyone that believes that metadata is "nothing" (or down plays it's significance) is either repeating propaganda or extremely ignorant. You will find few friends here repeating propaganda or making uneducated claims. You can't play down what it is, when we have studied what this data contains and can be used for. We also see the cases of IRS targeting certain groups which warrants a full open inspection of the system.

I get it, it's hard to believe your own government has become corrupt. The truth is that we have become very corrupt, and until we have open investigations and trials we won't know the extent of corruption. The days of arguing for the innocence of America are long gone (The Gulf of Tonkin is a bitch for that delusion, and just the first of many). The arguments we should be pushing today are how we fix the corruption, and how we open offices for inspection, and how we put criminals that have held (and perhaps are holding) public offices on trial.

As an intelligence-driven and a threat-focused national security organization with both intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities, the mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners.

Looking at the FBI Mission: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/qu... [fbi.gov] it looks like the Priorities are based on Crazy Congressional Wishlist. There are just too many Priorities. And, they are ranked according to sensationalism, not importance to the survival of the Nation. That page lists them as:

1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack

2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage

3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes

At this point, I think we can all clearly see that Terrorism only has as much importance as we create for it. If we don't regard it as important, the Terrorism threat goes almost entirely away. If you were to rank these Priorities according to what most impacts the survival of the Nation, I believe it would look more like:

I think his point may be just that... The FBI is not a spy agency and shouldn't be spying on citizens. It is a police force which could use surveillance (with proper subpoenas, etc.) to find criminals. Stop indiscriminate spying on everyone.

They are absolutely NOT a police force. For very strict reasons the US did not institute a national police force, aka a gendarme, that you see in many other countries. The Federal Government has "police" forces for very specific issues that are national interest issues, such as the Coast Guard for policing US shores, the ATF for weapons smuggling, the Customs Service for international smuggling enforcement, the DEA for drug enforcement, the Border Patrol for border s

"By law, the CIA is specifically prohibited from collecting foreign intelligence concerning the domestic activities of US citizens. Its mission is to collect information related to foreign intelligence and foreign counterintelligence. By direction of the president in Executive Order 12333 of 1981 and in accordance with procedures approved by the Attorney General, the CIA is restricted in the collection of intelligence information directed against US citizens. Collection is allowed only for an authorized intelligence purpose; for example, if there is a reason to believe that an individual is involved in espionage or international terrorist activities. The CIA's procedures require senior approval for any such collection that is allowed, and, depending on the collection technique employed, the sanction of the Director of National Intelligence and Attorney General may be required. These restrictions on the CIA have been in effect since the 1970s."

Of course, that's from the CIA's website, so it's exactly what they want you to think...

Can the officials with that authority just grant a blanket power to monitor everyone, and make that order secret? If so (And the scale of the monitoring show it must be so) then that protection isn't worth much.

There is probably no possibility that the NSA would be required to have a warrant, but I like to think the law enforcement aspect of the FBI makes it least somewhat plausible that a future court will start demanding it of them.

If they try that, they will stir up such a hornet's nest they will wish Congress had reined them in hard and early. I fully expect there will be mass dismissals and murder trials of NSA agents, and if there aren't, popular unrest and revenge killings. There would likely be revenge killings in any case, as was the case with Ruby Ridge. That's just the sort of thing that would confirm the worst fears of all the conspiracy nuts and angry, gun-toting, anti-government para

It would encourage the use of espionage/security methods in criminal cases.

That is, I think it would be more likely to corrupt the FBI than to clean up the NSA's investigation of Americans.

The real problem is priorities more than anything else.

The events of September 11th panicked us Americans, and we decided to overspend and over-allow security.

We need to realize that the number of terrorism related attacks are relatively SMALL and to cut funding for all things that invade our privacy - starting with the TSA.

When you limit their funds, they spend their money wisely on clear and present dangers.

When you give them unlimited funding, as we have been doing, they spend it on any wild-ass crazy possibility, which means they investigate people and cases that are clearly and obviously not terrorism related.

> That is, I think it would be more likely to corrupt the FBI than to clean up the NSA's investigation of> Americans.

Corrupt the FBI? The FBI are as incorruptible as the proverbial satan. We are talking about the people who have so precious little to really do that they go around creating criminals to arrest. These are the people who go after little shit online troublemakers and find mentally unstable people who they can shove a bomb in the hands of.

You are engagned in wishfull thinking. We have had just about as many attacks in the 2000's and 2010's as in the 80's and 90's. In particular US embass's have been under multiple terrorist attacks in 20001 - Nairobi, Ben Gahzi, etc. Not to mention the Boston Massacre, shoe bomber, the attack on the Sikh Temple, and the multiple ricin letter attacks - all against civilians for political purposes.

Worse, you have a twisted idea of what a terrorist attack is. USS Cole bombing was not a terrorist attack.It was an act of war. If a country (Sundanese Government officially liable for the attack, as per US judge) attacks a soldier, that is an act of war. If you attack civilians for political purposes, that is an act of terrorism. It doesn't matter if you use a bomb - or if you use a suicide attack. Soldiers are armed and are supposed to be capable of defending themselves (assuming some idiot did not give stupid rules of engagement). Civilians are usually unarmed and usually not capable of defending themselves - which is why attacking civilians is a far worse thing (i.e. a crime called terrorism) than attacking soldiers - which is a bad thing, but only an act of war, not of terrorism.

I think the point is that giving anyone (including the NSA) the NSA's current "duties" is a bad idea, but if the government still needs to spy on particular communications within the US as part of a criminal investigation, then it should be done using the government's police powers under a constitutionally valid warrant.

Only if there was an ongoing shooting war (not periodic acts of terrorism) should the government be using its war fighting authority to monitor domestic communications, which is essentially

"That is, I think it would be more likely to corrupt the FBI than to clean up the NSA's investigation of Americans.

The FBI has been marvelously corrupt on its own. There have been articles discussing "off the record" the competition between the FBI and the NSA about who could collect more data on US citizens. The FBI has escaped being put under the microscope so far, but they have plenty of data access that the general public is not aware of. Hence the change in scope and terminology on their charter. Make

The FBI already has a history of pretty ugly domestic surveillance, dating back at least to COINTELPRO (which was a systematic, determined project) and probably dating back further than that on an ad-hoc basis given what we know about J. Edgar Hoover and his penchant for keeping dirt on people. And all of this happened when the NSA was just trying to figure out how to tap phone lines without creating a lot of extra clicks.

It's an open debate on whether those revelations and the changes in leadership over t

I'm sure they are happy to break up into as many parts as you think they need.
I'm sure they are happy to keep people as misdirected as possible.
I'm sure they are happy to be closed down 100% no one at this address not more.../business as usual behind the curtain.

This is akin to a guy who has flown on an aircraft thinking he knows how to run an airline. "The NSA should hand off to the FBI spying on Americans." They do. NSA does not investigate domestic nor Americans unless specifically given a court order to do so (which is less than 60 Americans in the entire US as of December 2013). If the NSA stumbles upon metadata that links an American, or domestic entity tied to overseas terrorism (which is what they're lookin for), they hand off the metadata (phone number called, date/time stamp of call) and say to the FBI, "Whoever this is, is talking to terrorists overseas." Then the FBI runs with it.

CyberCommand, a command I'm very familiar with as prior-Air Force, doesn't have a reason to take over what the NSA does. The author of this article really doesn't know what he's talking about.

Considering that Bruce has actually seen the Snowden docs, I'd say you're the one who doesn't know what he's talking about.When foreign intel includes patrons of wikileaks and the pirate bay, and use their powers to go after drug cartels and gun runners, then that section of the NSA is doing the work of the FBI. Whether that work should exist or not (and we all seem to agree that it should not), is another question, but they are definitely doing work of the FBI.

Breaking up the NSA will force the issues of what data on Americans may be gathered by whom. Prior to the Patriot Act(s), no data on American citizens could be gathered unless authorization was requested through a search warrant. The FISA court has been a clumsy blunt force attempt to circumvent this, and it has relied on _temporary_ wartime provisions from the Patriot Acts. If the Constitution is to survive, the Pat Acts must be rewritten (or better yet, repealed whole). Only then can these lacerations

Bruce Schneier knows what he is talking about, but you didn't read the article. This is what he's referring to specifically:

This is where the NSA overreaches: collecting data on innocent Americans either incidentally or deliberately, and data on foreign citizens indiscriminately. It doesn't make us any safer, and it is liable to be abused. Even the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, acknowledged that the collection and storage of data was kept a secret for too long.

What are you even saying? The whole thing about parallel construction is not that evidence is invented. It's that if you actually committed a crime, then a lot of other evidence which can be reasonably discovered probably exists and its easy to find it - i.e. "this guy probably killed someone and buried him in the woods along the highway, we know from an inadmissable wiretap" - but that means there's still actually a body, and once discovered that is admissable evidence.

You can't be prosecuted from inadmissable evidence, but hohoho, you're also not as good at crime as you think. The alternative to completely eliminating parallel construction and surveillance exchange is a situation where NSA analysts happen across evidence of a crime (like the above example) and then can notify no one at all. Is that really an improvement?

Why do we pretend to have rights or laws if there is a class of people that they don't apply to? That's really what parallel construction means, because the NSA analyst, in this case, is clearly above the law, or being asked to defend his decisions.

We could just get rid of rights and laws, go back to the law of the jungle, and be done with it.

The problem people have with parallel construction is that it's pretty clear that it's over the line. At best extralegal, but pretty clearly illegal. You are denying p

Wrong. It's called "fruit of the poisoned tree" and it's one of the oldest rules in US criminal law. Nothing that arises out of the use of inadmissible evidence is, itself, admissible. You can tell the quality of a legal procedural by how often and blatantly they ignore this.

You can't be prosecuted from inadmissable evidence, but hohoho, you're also not as good at crime as you think. The alternative to completely eliminating parallel construction and surveillance exchange is a situation where NSA analysts happen across evidence of a crime (like the above example) and then can notify no one at all. Is that really an improvement?

That is a huge improvement. The reason you're allowed to see the prosecutors evidence, and the reason you are given the right to face your accusers is to prevent the justice system from being abused. If you have no idea how they obtained evidence, you have no way of trying to discredit the evidence to begin with. The NSA could drop a tip to the DEA that you're smuggling drugs. Only if the NSA planted the drugs in your vehicle before the DEA got that tip and they used a "routine traffic stop" to suggest

but that means there's still actually a body, and once discovered that is admissable evidence.

Then why is one of the key tenets of parallel reconstruction the total denial of any link to NSA-sourced information? Why don't they openly admit that the investigation started with inadmissible evidence, but that evidence will not be used at trial?

What initiates the process is your act of calling internationally, and correllating to a known or suspected threat. 99.999% of us will never "accidentally" call anyone the NSA is interested in. Have you made a call and accidentally gotten the German president? Also, there are literally millions of calls. The only thing that gets an analyst looking at your specific call is multiple calls. You'd have to call President Joachim Gauck [wikipedia.org] quite a few times in my ficiticous scenario. The very same thing would happen with the DEA if you called a drug dealer the next street over. "Roving wiretaps," is the term for what would catch you. "Opps, wrong number" and you're not very likely to get a surprise visit at home. Call 5-10 times asking, "for the suff," and you might come home to guests.

Also, in this specific case I believe you're trying to make, the NSA surveillence tip isn't admissible in court. If you've read an intel document, a large number state at the very beginning in no uncertain terms, "This information is not to be used in a court of law or for any judicial purposes." (I'm paraphrasing). It's on the FBI to investigate, find probable cause, get a prosecutor to agree, find a judge to agree, and then charge you. Whether it's the NSA seeing your metadata linking your phone call to a Taliban bomb-making expert in Syria, or a NYPD officer seeing, as he performs a walking patrol, large tubs of liquid in your car's backseat, leading to multiple triggers and a remote receiver, while parked at a shopping mall during Christmas season, is there really a difference? No. Before you say, "Well my car is in a public place," remember your international call crosses the same legal threshold. If you absolutely want to be unspied upon while calling your TB bombmaker by the NSA, then fly him stateside so it's a domestic phone call. This assumes the guy isn't already on a no-fly and being monitored, so good luck. Back on point, governments watch other governments. Part of this is agencies with specific missions.

The NSA is in charge of monitoring overseas communications. They are within the Legislative Branch's oversight and follow federal laws on what they can look for, how they look, etc. If you don't want to know what threats are overseas, then write your Senator and Representatives. As you draft that email, keep in mind thousands were saved during WWII by the fact we broke German encyption. 9/11 was missed because there was no system at the time to catch the two Al Quida operatives in San Diego who were calling their AQ handler overseas, and there was no process for the NSA to tip the FBI that there's two phone numbers in the US who are calling a known bomb maker overseas. If you think it's bad to catch this, mail the letter (or hit "Send" on the E-mail, "Submit" on the website submission).

You are incorrect about the 9/11 bits. A number of the terrorists were known and being monitored right up until they crossed into our borders. There was actually an FBI agent working with the group monitoring them. He wanted to take what they had on them back to the FBI so they could track the terrorists. He was threatened with losing his career if he did so because whoever he was working with wanted the bust should there be one and they didn't want the FBI getting the headlines instead. So we ended up miss

Except this isn't what the NSA is doing, They are spying on US Citizens you say only 80 Americans have been spied on does that include the 16,000 Secret warrants, which we have no idea what they have been used for because its classified..

I challenge you then to produce 16,000 victims of improper evidence gathering by the NSA... Problem for this argument is that there are exactly ZERO people who have been charged from such warrants or convicted of crimes due to the existence of such evidence. Not to mention that the granting of a warrant means the Judge agreed there was sufficient reason to conduct the search which, by definition, makes the gathering of it legal.

So, go get a true case of somebody who was charged and convicted based on clas

This is like saying that it's OK that your car was run over by a bulldozer, because it was on its way to demolish a house. You seem to think that because the intrusion doesn't have an purpose directed against the intruded, it's OK. It's actually the entire problem.

I like it, assuming that their funding and capabilities get scaled way back. Splitting it into separate arms of the FBI and military could assign actual reasons and purpose to their operations; as opposed to one independent data-addicted behemoth whose sole mission is to hork down all the information it can get it's paws on, regardless of cost or actual usefulness to security. Too bad this is extremely unlikely to happen.

Most likely, the NSA would be split along the lines of their three core missions:

- Spy on and sabotage information systems of enemies of the United States to disrupt their operations.- Spy on and sabotage information systems of friendly foreign nations to maintain and enhance US hegemony.- Spy on and sabotage information systems of US citizens, to chill free speech that might threaten the NSA with budget cuts.

Then the first could be downsized as not an essential contributor to their primary goal of maintain

The NSA does not necessarily want you to be insecure. As a matter of fact, I have downloaded documents from their web site with tips on how to configure my OSes to be more secure (and I don't recall any of the tips requiring me to install any additional software, which definitely would have raised a red flag). It is in the best interest of the NSA that the computers that protect sensitive data in all public and private sectors be secure from outside threats. With that said, it is also in the NSA's interest to be able to access as much data from these same machines as they can possibly gather. Therefore, they walk a tight line where it's best when everyone's security is loose enough that the NSA can get in, but tight enough to keep less sophisticated groups out. Based on systems such as BULLRUN, it seems that the NSA has become more concerned with gaining access for themselves over encouraging tight security.

I work in critical infrastructure protection CIP (the power grid). My nightmare is the back doors that NSA may have inserted in our systems.

Why would NSA do that? Because terrorists might get jobs at CIP companies and use their systems to communicate with other terrorists. Also because NSA can't selectively insert back doors only in the systems of bad guys. They do it by compromising any and all systems globally.

What is the problem for me? If a back door exists, then I must assume that it is only a ma

Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.

The common (arguably flawed) rebuttal to this is that "everyone" includes "people who want to do us harm". That is to say if the NSA were to succeed in making security stronger for "everyone" it would have made security stronger for the bad guys too, potentially allowing the existence of secure communication channels that would empower the "bad guys" to do more harm than they would be abl

Sad but nobody will listen to this, there's too much money and political glad handing going on in DC to keep the current status quo in place.

The only way to get rid of the corruption and spying in DC is to get rid of the current bunch of clowns we have in office and to pass meaningful campaign finance reform legislation to eliminate the flow of money from special interests into politics. That goes for both parties.

The primary example we have of this is the NSA's BULLRUN program, which tries to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices." This is the worst of the NSA's excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide..... [T]he remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.'"

In an actual war - which is what the whole DoD is there for - SIGINT is incredibly powerful. Imagine WWII again without cracking the Enigma machines, what would have happened without it is anyone's guess but an oft quoted assessment says it shortened the war by two years. For all we know a more effective sea blockade of the UK could have led to their surrender or the Russians invading all of Europe with the UK/US on the sidelines. If the Germans had known the plans for D-day it would have been a massacre.

The third is the deliberate sabotaging of security. The primary example we have of this is the NSA's BULLRUN program, which tries to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices."

This is where the Free and Open source community can assist.

1. By having free (as in GPL licensed) cryptographically secure psudorandom number generators that all can use to help secure their communications.

Well, let's elaborate, shall we. I think the number of possible satisfactory solutions to the NSA problem are infinite. This plan, like every other one that would work all fall on unshakable premise. Congress needs to pass legislation removing previously granted powers(then do something else, apparently, to mollify those who are actually scared of terrorists, in this case move those powers to law enforcement).

This one premise, though, has shown zero chance of happening. Those in congress critical of the NSA's behavior mostly seem interested in using it as an attack chip for the republican party in the next couple elections, and so leaving the power in the executive plays to their needs. The executive, for their part, have either bought, or are willing to attempt to sell, the pragmatism line, and the laws passed by congress say it's legal, so they don't see a need to change anything by fiat.

> This one premise, though, has shown zero chance of happening. Those in congress critical of the NSA's behavior mostly seem interested in using it as an attack chip for the republican party in the next couple elections, and so leaving the power in the executive plays to their needs.

I would support Beta 100% if they gave me the ability to moderate posts "+1 Depressing".

Congress needs to pass legislation removing previously granted powers(then do something else, apparently, to mollify those who are actually scared of terrorists, in this case move those powers to law enforcement).

So to use your terms, Congress needs to pass something to mollify the people scared of NSA?

DO NOT break up the NSA. Do away with it and replace it with nothing. The CIA too.

For those of you treasonous traitors that like to yell "national security" to cover up for your crimes, consider this: Before the CIA and NSA were founded, the US was 8-0 in war. Since those organizations were founded, the US is 0-5 in war.

You treasonous traitors that like the NSA and CIA (I'm looking at you cold fjord) are the national security risks.

I just love the thought of the FSB, Mossad, MI5, and just about every other foreign intelligence network on Earth (and those are merely the legal ones) running rampant throughout our country and society without the CIA to check them. Gosh, that'd be so much fun to just lower our guard and take punches! Oh hey, maybe those other nations would be so friendly towards us once we dismantled our intelligence apparatus that they'd willingly leave us alone! And forswear corporate espionage to boot!
Dismantle the NSA, yes. Spread it out amongst the other agencies, yes. But don't disarm us completely. The CIA has screwed up a lot, so has the FBI--but they're still good ideas to have in place. We as a society have to reassume the responsibility, and the maturity of overseeing the operations of those two agencies on an appropriate basis.

I just love the thought of the FSB, Mossad, MI5, and just about every other foreign intelligence network on Earth (and those are merely the legal ones) running rampant throughout our country and society without the CIA to check them. Gosh, that'd be so much fun to just lower our guard and take punches! Oh hey, maybe those other nations would be so friendly towards us once we dismantled our intelligence apparatus that they'd willingly leave us alone! And forswear corporate espionage to boot!Dismantle the NSA, yes. Spread it out amongst the other agencies, yes. But don't disarm us completely. The CIA has screwed up a lot, so has the FBI--but they're still good ideas to have in place. We as a society have to reassume the responsibility, and the maturity of overseeing the operations of those two agencies on an appropriate basis.

Er, you do realize that when foreign adversaries run rampant through our country and our society, that the federal agency tasked with dealing with them is the FBI, don't you?

The CIA is supposed to be restricted to doing that job OUTSIDE the USA.

Let's look at some third-party information [wikipedia.org]. Wikipedia's certainly contestable, but it's good enough for a general idea. Prior to 1950, The United States had a mix of victory and defeat, with the World Wars as clear outliers in the extreme victory area. After the 1947 foun

From 1776 to 1945:
AFAIK we were all wins except the War of 1812, which was just a giant clusterfuck. We only won after the buzzer, so the shot doesn't really count. The other side didn't really win either, so all in all a waste of resources.
1946 - present. Korea was tie. Everything else was along the lines of win or get bored and go home. No one can stand toe-to-toe with the USA and win an all-out war. What they CAN do is just make sure they start with a third world dump that can hardly be made worse by

But think of how awkward it would be when the N runs into S or A at the spy conventions. They'd reminisce about the old times of spying on millions of Americans. They'd probably laugh about some guy on deviantart drawing naked women and crying while masturbating. Then N would be like "So, you guys want to get out of here" and the A would be like "N, look, we can't. S and I have a good thing going, you're just too crazy for us, lets just be friends," and N would be like "Sure yeah, no you're right, it's cool." But it won't be cool. N will finish his drink and then leave, all three of them will feel bad. A and S will go home and start getting intimate, but S won't be able to get it up, thinking about how bad N must feel.

Not really. Modern justice is one of those concepts that came about as a way to stop the cycles of violence fed by vigilante justice. As such it needs to be violent and ugly enough to sate the victim's desire for revenge well enough that they don't feel the need to take things into their own hands. At the extreme, why do you suppose executions are so brutal? We know perfectly well how to kill people completely painlessly - a gas chamber filled with pure nitrogen will knock somebody unconscious in under a minute, usually without them ever noticing anything is wrong (we're not wired to detect oxygen deprivation), and they'll be dead a few minutes later. But somebody dieing peacefully in their sleep doesn't provide any catharsis for the victims. So we use techniques that induce plenty of twitching and whimpering to sate our bloodthirsty consciences.

Another good example is the political unpopularity of rehabilitation programs for prisoners. They may help to prevent repeat offending, but they also insult people's sense of justice. They want to see the criminals made to suffer - doing anything to help them just feels wrong.

Which is really sad since the concept of rehabilitation was really pioneered by American groups, but then the people who helped start the movement were generally voted out of office in favor of 'make them suffer' candidates. So now other countries have learned from what we were doing AND observed the negative impact of moving away from that model and thus produced systems that, from an actual 'reducing crime' perspective are much more effective but which have less emotional satisfaction to them.

Are you sure that it's got nothing to do with the fact that about half of US nitrogen is imported, and that using nitrogen for execution might prevent certain trade partners from being able to continue legally exporting nitrogen to us, which could have catastrophic consequences for US agriculture?

I don't know what the floating-point performance of their computers is, but some of the scientific computing community would probably appreciate it if Fort Meade was auctioned off. Or, for that matter, [bit|lite|doge]coin miners.